range, very strange. His
pronunciation of English was so extravagant that I can't even attempt to
reproduce it. For instance, he said "Fferie strantch." Combined with
the bellowing intonation it made the language of one's childhood sound
weirdly startling, and even if considered purely as a kind of unmeaning
noise it filled you with astonishment at first. "They had," he
continued, "been acquainted with Captain Falk for very many years, and
never had any reason...."

"That's why I come to you, of course," I interrupted. "I've the right
to know the meaning of this infernal nonsense." In the half light of the
room, which was greenish, because of the tree-tops screening the
window, I saw him writhe his meagre shoulders. It came into my head, as
disconnected ideas will come at all sorts of times into one's head, that
this, most likely, was the very room where, if the tale were true, Falk
had been lectured by Mr. Siegers, the father. Mr. Siegers' (the son's)
overwhelming voice, in brassy blasts, as though he had been trying to
articulate his words through a trombone, was expressing his great regret
at a conduct characterised by a very marked want of discretion... As I
lived I was being lectured too! His deafening gibberish was difficult to
follow, but it was _my_ conduct--mine!--that... Damn! I wasn't going to
stand this.

"What on earth are you driving at?" I asked in a passion. I put my hat
on my head (he never offered a seat to anybody), and as he seemed for
the moment struck dumb by my irreverence, I turned my back on him and
marched out. His vocal arrangements blared after me a few threats of
coming down on the ship for the demurrage of the lighters, and all the
other expenses consequent upon the delays arising from my frivolity.

Once outside in the sunshine my head swam. It was no longer a question
of mere delay. I perceived myself involved in hopeless and humiliating
absurdities that were leading me to something very like a disaster. "Let
us be calm," I muttered to myself, and ran into the shade of a
leprous wall. From that short side-street I could see the broad main
thoroughfare ruinous and gay, running away, away between stretches of
decaying masonry, bamboo fences, ranges of arcades of brick and plaster,
hovels of lath and mud, lofty temple gates of carved timber, huts of
rotten mats--an immensely wide thoroughfare, loosely packed as far as
the eye could reach with a barefooted and brown multitude paddling ankle